


Oblivion’s Been Calling Since it Found Out Where I Live

by PrufrockianParalysis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Humanstuck, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 08:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrufrockianParalysis/pseuds/PrufrockianParalysis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat is sick, and Dave is the only one left to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oblivion’s Been Calling Since it Found Out Where I Live

        You’d spin it like a story if you could, curl the words once, twice, three times into a rap – something you can spit into a mic, edit until you hate, save under a name like _thisbullshit.mp3_ and then forget about altogether.

        According to Rose this is _disassociation_. According to you, this is _shut the fuck up i dont need your condescending concern lalonde this is just another way for you to feel better than me well you dont get it it is so fucking hard every fucking day it is so fucking hard_ –

        And you go to the hospital to visit, every day. You always bring something - like a DVD he left at your place, or a potato chip you found that looks just like Bill Clinton if you turn your head thirty degrees to the right and crinkle your eyes. You find excuses wherever you can. _i just want you to be able to watch failure to fucking launch one last time before you go off to your dance party with the big g_

_before you get your one way ticket to godsville_

_before you start ordering dirt sandwiches from room service at the underground hotel -_

        And he doesn’t smile at you, but he does that eyebrow-thing – the thing that he says he doesn’t do, but he totally does and you like it, you like it a lot – and he says, _That last one was pretty weak. I cannot believe I am saying this, but you’ve actually become more of a festering sack of bullshit than you were when I got here. All the goddamned painkillers they are giving me have, in absolutely no goddamned way, made you any more tolerable. How is that even possible?_

        You let him riff on you for a while, and you look not at him, exactly, but directly to the left of him – out the low, thin window to a magnificent view of the parking lot. The cars are flush in the timid morning air - white with the unfulfilled promise of snow. You watch a dark stain of birds startle and leave tracks across the edge of the sky. You answer Karkat vaguely ( _don’t be like that princess, you know you love me_ and he snorts and hits you - but it doesn’t hurt, it feels like rain on the roof, like being eight, again, listening to your brother’s footsteps in the hall), you tell him what you remember of the news, tell him how everyone is doing without really touching them – you graze against Rose, Jade, Terezi, John. Don’t focus on why he needs you to fill him in on these things. You don’t talk about why they stopped coming, but you know he notices. He’s not that far gone. Not today.

        His hair is matted on one side - the side where he usually sleeps, legs tucked beneath his chin, fists curling and tangled in the sheets. He is angry, yes – you can see that in the line of his spine, the set of his jaw, the way he spits monosyllabic answers at the nurses. He talks more to you than anyone else (according to Rose, who stopped driving down to see him under the guise of “gas prices”. _own up lalonde you just dont want to watch someone die youre just tired of hearing that itll get better and itll get better and then it doesnt ever get better hes always so fucking sick because he was born sick and nobody fucking deserves this nobody fucking_ – but you never said any of that. You shrugged and drank the chamomile bullshit she set in front of you and then drove home with the radio stuck on a channel that only played static, interspersed with startling ten-second bursts of colorful salsa music.) But Karkat isn’t angry the way you are. You bite your fists in the shower every morning – fantasize about killing the new parents in the apartment next to yours every night. You have this vivid, unnatural delusion that you’ll walk over there with your katana in hand, rap your knuckles in alternating pulses of three underneath the 105B sign peeling off their door, and when they let you in, you’ll cut them and their stupid loud baby into pieces, and then you’ll watch “The Price is Right” on their nice, big television until you fall asleep, drooling on your hand, the corduroy grain of their trendy couch imprinted permanently into your cheek. You imagine that, somehow, will make things even.

        Karkat fights sleep when you are there, even though you tell him _fuck off into dreamland ill tell you if you miss anything really good here broski_ , but he doesn’t listen, just rubs the heels of his hands deep, deep into his eye sockets. You are filled with the incredible urge to ask what he sees back there – the ocean or the stars. You always thought the iridescent map of your veins looked like a lightning storm, but Jade said she saw the depths of the sea when she squeezed her eyes tight behind her palms. You haven’t heard from Jade in three months. You decide not to ask Karkat. He’d be a dick about it.

        _Fuck sickle-cells_. Karkat says, quietly. He is visibly exhausted, and his body has unconsciously curled toward you, so you can feel the heat radiating off his forehead brush your upper inner arm. _yeah fuck your communist cells man_. You crack a grin and he rolls his eyes and mouths _Weak analogy_ at you, but it doesn’t really matter, because you like him when he’s fuzzy like this. When sometimes he’ll grab your hand and fall asleep with it tucked beneath his collarbone. This time he doesn’t touch you, but he shivers a little closer, closes his eyes.

        _Thanks._

        He says it in a crunched way, like it hurts.

        _Thanks for coming, still._

        You don’t say anything, just swallow the extra saliva that has somehow pooled in the very back of your throat, and you reach out and very lightly brush the hair from his slick, sticky forehead. He shakes and sighs and you take that as your cue to move on to the bed and sit next to him, fingers playing lazily in his hair, fingers occasionally dipping to check the pulse on his neck, feel it slow as he finally falls into shuddering, tenuous sleep.

        When you wake, his head is tucked beneath your chin and he is shoving his sharp little hands into your stomach.

        _You’re taking up all of the bed, you tremendous fuck sponge_. He says.

        And he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Only Existing Footage” by The Extra Lens


End file.
